“Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then... find the way.”

My friend Lauren Muratore commissioned a drawing of Abraham Lincoln through Gettysburg Seminary to help promote the seminary at the 2015 ELCA Youth Gathering in Detroit.

The quote comes from a speech Lincoln gave in 1848. There was apparently a debate about whether the federal government should provide funding to projects in individual states. Lincoln disagrees with President Polk's arguments against it. He argues that the federal government should be able to take on massive structural programs (such as an intercontinental railway) and let the States handle smaller ones (like a bridge over a small stream). The quote doesn't discredit that smaller programs shouldn't be done, but that they would "find the way."

Huge thanks to Benjamin David Cassell for help understanding the politics.